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Podcasting
Turning Panic Into Money: Marc Maron's Podcast Gold
Just over two years ago, comedian Marc Maron was out of a job, couldn't get standup gigs and was going through a debilitating divorce that had put him in debt. With "nothing to lose," as he put it, he launched the WTF podcast, by sneaking into the New York offices of Air America radio, from which he'd just been fired....
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Thought Leader Q&A
How Josh & Chuck Made 'Stuff You Should Know' a Hit Podcast
Perhaps you were hunting around iTunes one day and came across a list of the top audio podcasts. There in the top five among the usual suspects from NPR was something called Stuff You Should Know. And once you started listening, you were hooked on the congenial chit-chat between hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant, senior writers at HowStuffWorks.com (owned...
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4MR
4-Minute Roundup: #AmazonFail; Journalism Online; Ashton Kutcher Speaks!
Here's the latest 4MR audio report from MediaShift. This week I look at the controversy surrounding #AmazonFail, a protest that formed on Twitter when the giant bookseller delisted thousands of gay-themed books from its bestseller lists. Amazon eventually said it was a mistake by an employee in France, but the PR damage was done. I also look at the unveiling...
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Digging Deeper
New Gatekeepers Twitter, Apple, YouTube Need Transparency in Editorial Picks
There was a time when all you needed was a good record review in Rolling Stone or a stellar book review in the New York Times to get a boost in sales and popularity. But as those old gatekeepers lose their cachet in the digital age, a new set of gatekeepers has sprung up and they don't have bylines. These...
more »Thought Leader Q&A
Locative Media Project Aims to Collect Stories of Atlanta
The technology and journalism fields have long been dominated by men, especially in the upper management of big companies. But the J-Lab and McCormick Foundation want to shine the light on new ideas from women who work at mainstream media outlets but want to start something up on the side. That's why they started giving out grants in their...
more »NewspaperShift
Post-Mortem on the Multimedia Boot Camp
For five and a half days, a group of mostly newspaper journalists (with a few broadcasters and non-profit folks thrown in) took an intensive boot camp multimedia training at UC Berkeley through the Knight Digital Media Center. The idea was to learn as much as possible about shooting and editing video, capturing and editing audio, building Flash animations, doing...
more »NewspaperShift
Flash Techniques, and the Participatory Push by Current TV
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- The week-long training at UC Berkeley in multimedia has now moved to a new phase. After getting basic background on audio, video and photographic equipment, we went out into the field on our group's assignment. My group, Team Gecko, went to visit Professor Robert Full to learn about the work he's done in biomechanics. Full's lab...
more »NewspaperShift
Photography Training and Doing More with Less in El Paso
It's now Day 3 in the marathon week-long multimedia boot camp at UC Berkeley run by the Knight Digital Media Center. We have broken into groups to create various multimedia stories, and later today we'll go out to do our primary interviews and video shoots. My group will be meeting with Robert Full, a professor who studies robotics based on animal movements.
more »NewspaperShift
Hands-On Training with Videocameras and Shooting for the Web
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- After our long storyboarding sessions, it's now time to move into more hands-on training and seminars on doing video shooting, audio recording, digital photography and using Macintosh computers. So far, there's been a good mix of lectures, discussions and collaborative work on storyboards for our projects. The group is very inquisitive, and the instructors have done...
more »Philosophy
Journalists, Bloggers Have a Sorry History at Startups
As a journalist covering a particular business, there is a temptation to believe that we know enough about that business to actually become a full participant in that business. We have been writing about it, we see what works and what fails, so we should know enough to try our hand at it too. But more often than not,...
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
6 Reasons I'm Not Hooked on Podcasts
A year ago, Mark wrote about the factors that were limiting the growth of podcast adoption. Some of the problems include the difficulty in finding quality content, a lack of understanding of the medium, and a general impatience in getting podcasts to work. I can relate. Try as I might, I haven't been able to make podcasts a part of...
more »Digging Deeper
TechPresident, 10Questions Put Spotlight on 'Voter-Generated Content'
Just as the Internet and technology have shifted the playing field in media, allowing bloggers and podcasters to help set the news agenda, so has the realm of politics been disrupted by technology that gives voters more power to inject their own issues into the fray. And in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, that disruption has been strongest in...
more »Your Take
What blogs would you nominate as the best in the world?
It's that time of year again. No, not just the new fall TV season. It's also blog nomination season, when big international groups (and smaller national groups) ask people to submit nominees for the best blogs. In November, I'll again be a judge for the Best of the Blogs (The BOBs) awards, run by the German's international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle....
more »Jennifer Woodard Maderazo
'Open Universities' Try to Bring College to Masses
A college education in the United States can be one of the most costly in the world. For many young people, college isn't an option because of the economic strain it represents for their families. And many older people who would like to attend classes must forego studies to make ends meet. But thanks to the power of voluntary...
more »Digging Deeper
Collaborative Radio Shows Invite Listeners into Creative Process
Long before the term citizen journalism became trendy, ordinary citizens shared the stage for decades with professional journalists in talk radio. They collaborated, they cajoled, they ranted and they often added wit and wisdom to live radio call-in shows. But with the advent of the Internet, public radio shows are finding that websites -- and blogs in particular --...
more »Digging Deeper
Will Video Kill the Audio Podcasting Star? Not Exactly
All the media heat these days is around online video and the YouTube phenomenon. Presidential candidates are sparring through YouTube. Google pays a bundle to buy YouTube, and then Viacom sues for $1 billion. It all makes the online audio phenomenon of podcasting feel like yesterday's news. Audio fans, however, need not despair. Video may have stolen the media...
more »Digging Deeper
Podcasts are audio or video shows that you can subscribe to via the Internet and listen to or watch on your own time on your computer, portable MP3 player or other web-connected device. The power of podcasts is that you can subscribe to the shows you want, and then they automatically appear in your podcast aggregator software such as Juice or Apple's iTunes. When you plug in your portable MP3 player -- which can be an iPod or any other player -- your podcasts can then be uploaded and experienced on the go.
more »Open Source Reporting
Building the Ultimate Auto Media Center
When it comes to enjoying music or talk radio in the car, why does everything have to be so complicated? First, I have to spend time loading up my iPod with music or podcasts I've downloaded. Then I have to charge my iPod up with power. Then I have to connect my iPod to my car stereo's converter cable. Then I have to fiddle around with the iPod controls to find the music or podcasts I want to listen to -- and NOT while driving.
more »Podcasting
Podcast Audience Small But Growing...Enough?
You could call it the Headline Conundrum. Or maybe Sound-Bite Logic. Whatever the term, there's a regular problem with journalism related to the brevity of space to explain a complex issue or finding. A recent survey by Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 12% of Internet users have downloaded a podcast, up from 7% who said they did the same thing in a similar survey six months before. But as for people who download podcasts on a daily basis, the number was a tiny 1%.
more »Your Take Roundup
AmigoFish, VlogMap Point to Podcast Goodness
For people new to the world of podcasting, there are a few hurdles to jump before feeling comfortable with the medium. First, you have to consider where you'll listen or watch podcasts -- on your computer or on your portable MP3 player. Then you have to subscribe to podcasts you want to hear, and learn how to do that. For the techno-savvy, it's a relatively painless process, but for others it could be simpler.
more »Your Take
How do you find out about good podcasts?
A couple years ago, you could find all the podcasts in existence just by checking the iPodder Directory to see the eclectic mix of homegrown and technology-related audio shows. Now the number of podcasts has exploded as many mainstream news and entertainment companies jump on the bandwagon, and Jupiter Research estimates that 9 million Americans downloaded a podcast in the month of June. I've done a Guide to Podcast Directories but I'm wondering how you find out about good podcasts. Do you find them on news websites or other media sites? Do you check the iTunes podcast directory? Do you hear about them from friends and family? Share your thoughts on how you find good podcasts in the comments below and I'll run the best ones in next week's Your Take Roundup.
more »NewspaperShift
Newspaper Sites Hot to Blog, Cool to Podcasts
Newspaper companies are feeling the shift hard, as people go from reading print newspapers to getting their news and classified ads on the Internet. But if there's one thing the Newspaper Association of America can hang their hat on, it's that newspaper websites continue to grow their audiences and advertising revenues. So if people are not reading papers in print, at least they might be getting their news online from the same news source.
more »Your Take Roundup
True Gritz Videoblog a Comic Fave Among Friends
So this is how you win elections in the South. I asked MediaShift readers to name their favorite sites for comic relief or work breaks, and the True Gritz video blog won in a landslide of 11 votes. But upon further review, two of the votes came from the True Gritz videoblog's stars, Jen Gordon and Grayson Hurst Daughters, with another vote coming from the show's lighting person, Danielle Ayan.
more »Media Usage
Big Media Last to Know Bloggers Not in Pajamas
Today was going to be a day of triumphalism in the new media world, a day where I would celebrate the growing ranks of blog creators (a.k.a. bloggers) and blog readers in the U.S., while also noting the growing number of people downloading podcasts. I would combine the happy results from a Pew Internet survey on blogging with the great news (PDF file) from Nielsen//Netratings that podcasting was gaining a foothold.
more »Your Take Roundup
Your Take Roundup::You Listen to Podcasts On Your Own Time
Perhaps the term "podcasting" isn't the best way to describe these audio shows that run the gamut from talk to music. First of all, you can listen to podcasts on your home or work computer, or on any portable MP3 player you choose and not just an Apple iPod. Plus, you can listen on your car radio with the...
more »MusicShift
Your Take Roundup::Do-It-Yourself Ways to Find Good Music
Just as the Internet and technology have changed the way people get their news, the same can be said about finding good music. At one time in our unconnected, non-Internet past, we had to listen closely to the radio, studiously writing down artist names and song titles, and then going in search of the music at local record stores...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::Singapore Tries to Squelch Political Blogs, Podcasts
While many Americans have been focused lately on online censorship in China, few have noticed a similar practice in other countries such as Singapore. That island state is a parliamentary republic in theory, but has really been run by one dominant party in its history of independence since 1965 (see a Singapore historical timeline here). The mainstream media is...
more »AdvertisingShift
Digging Deeper::Go Daddy Gives Podcasters Freedom to Create Ads
Advertisers and marketers spend much of their time (and money) trying to pitch the public on their products and services. Their language includes terms like "mindshare" and "branding" and "conversion rates." It's all about convincing you and me to go out and buy their stuff, and how to motivate us to do it, by any means necessary. But imagine...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::How Does iTunes Pick Featured Podcasts?
While working on last's week's guide to podcast directories, I stumbled onto one of the great mysteries of the podcasting world: Just how exactly does Apple choose the featured podcasts in its popular podcast directory? And the more I looked at other directories, the more I had similar questions about what was chosen and why. So I methodically contacted...
more »Digging Deeper
Digging Deeper::Your Guide to Podcast Directories
Even though podcasts didn't exist until mid-2004, there are now so many of them that it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number. Yahoo recently listed more than 23,000 podcasts in its News category of podcasts. So what's a listener to do? Luckily there are a few excellent online directories that list and rank podcasts to help you find...
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